Equilibrium arsenic adsorption onto metallic oxides : Isotherm models, error analysis and removal mechanism

Arsenic adsorption properties of mono- (Fe or Al) and binary (Fe-Al) metal oxides supported on natural zeolite were investigated at three levels of temperature (298, 318 and 338 K). All data obtained from equilibrium experiments were analyzed by Freundlich, Langmuir, Dubinin-Radushkevich, Sips, Toth and Redlich-Peterson isotherms, and error functions were used to predict the best fitting model. The error analysis demonstrated that the As(Ⅴ) adsorption processes were best described by the Dubinin-Raduskevich model with the lowest sum of normalized error values. According to results, the presence of iron and aluminum oxides in the zeolite network improved the As(Ⅴ) adsorption capacity of the raw zeolite (ZNa). The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses of ZNa-Fe and ZNa-AlFe samples suggested that the redox reactions are the postulated mechanisms for the adsorption onto them while the adsorption process is followed by surface complexation reactions for ZNa-Al